Barbara Kay: Bill Maher 1, Chrystia Freeland 0

Maher went on to blast multiculturalism: “this idea that somehow we do share values that all religions are alike is bullshit, and we need to call it bullshit.” That galvanized Freeland who “now more than ever” called for respect for “diversity,” because — here’s where she lost the thread — “we in Canada are not going to say Muslims are worse than Christians, or are worse than Jews, or worse than atheists.” Maher shot back, “Not as people, the ideas are worse.”

Maher and his other guests were keen to talk about those ideas, but Freeland just couldn’t bring herself to go there. You could almost see alarm bells ringing in her brain: “Offensive to Muslims! Abort! Abort!” It was as though an automatic pilot had overridden her manual controls. Unable to engage, she remained doggedly on script: “it is incredibly dangerous, and very wrong, to … say there is something wrong with being a Muslim,” which nobody on the panel had said; in fact, both King and Domenech spoke sympathetically of Muslim victims of jihadism...

...Clearly Maher (as well as King and Domenech) and Freeland were talking past each other. The American panelists, intellectually marinated in First Amendment rights, understood that while it is wrong to defame any faith group collectively (like, say, “Muslim men hate women”), it is impossible under U.S. law to demonize an idea ( “Sharia law is misogynistic”). But Western progressives, splendidly represented by Freeland, no longer grasp the distinction. They have internalized the pernicious, anti-democratic, dangerous notion of “Islamophobia” — the very concept was invented and promoted by stealth-jihad strategists — which interprets as defamation criticism of Islam itself...